Kemény János: Baja thj. város 1944-1949. évi története a polgármesteri jelentések tükrében 1. - Forrásközlemények 12. (Kecskemét, 2015)

Mellékletek - Summary

public health service, the execution of agrarian reform, the state of the local agricultural, industrial production and commerce, and the tasks concerning technical and social administration.

Solving the problems after the war would have required large sums of money, which understandably wasn’t available. Significant problems developed. The proceeds of leasing city property weren’t forthcoming, the tax incomes decreased, and even the state provided support for families of the fallen, injured soldiers and prisoners of war had to be paid by the city. The lack of adequate housing, the lack of goods and raw materials impeded the activities of the local traders and craftsmen. The lack of goods caused an increase in prices, the softening up of economic relationships caused the devaluation of the currency in the whole country. Economic problems were worsened by the poor transportation infrastructure and the cost of war reparations. Inflation decreased spending power, illegal trading, the black market, alarmism caused an increase in prices. All this led to a crisis of trust and impoverishment. Attempts were made to adopt alternative currencies, but neither the so- called “tax-pengő”, nor the banknote tenths improved the situation. The economic and fiscal situation stabilized only after the new currency, the Forint was adopted on 1 August, 1946. A major problem was the lack of adequate manpower for collecting taxes. The B-listing further decreased the number of officials in the city’s tax office, which in itself was inadequate, endangering even the uninterrupted operation of the office.

The city wasn’t able to get over the problems after the revival of free trade. The lack of adequate supply of corn, flour, hard cash and fuel, the inadequate number of mills, bakers and vehicles made the situation worse. Supplying the population with essential food stuff was made hard by a lack of salt, sugar, milk, fat and also refuse fuel. The coal shortfall was compensated by cutting down one third of the woods in the ownership of the city, and later by trying to buy coal from abroad and other parts of the country. The supply of bread was dependent on the uninterrupted compulsory agricultural delivery and the problems of that process.

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